The ‘Green Lie’

So let me ask you a question, do you prefer buying products at the market with tags like organic, eco-friendly, natural, etc? Of course, you do because it reduces the guilt in you for destroying nature

slowly. As per the Nielson study, more than 70% of buyers today are ready to pay an extra amount for ‘Sustainable Brands’. Now quickly apply this behavioural trend to 21st-century capitalism and market economy and you will understand the causes of ‘Greenwashing’. Greenwashing is the process of conveying a false impression or misleading information about how a company’s products are environmentally sound and safe. It involves capitalizing on the growing market of environmentally safe products. In the era where governments and communities are raising voices towards green and organic, definitely deceiving and conveying the false impressions of a company or its products being environmentally conscious or friendly can retain consumer confidence. What is sad today is that this activity has become a brilliant marketing strategy. Any product labelled eco-friendly or natural or organic sells better and has leverage over other products. The worse part is that it is destroying market competition, monopolizing and also enterprising false environmentalism. Products being sold under these labels do not even have to be so in reality; after all, we have negligible to zero regulation against Greenwashing.

Coca-Cola, Nestle, Unilever, etc. are some of the big industries which claim to be concerned and working towards reducing plastic pollution. But going by their statistics, they are among the highest plastic polluting companies in the world. Fundamentally, these companies are heavily dependent on plastic materials for packaging and storing purposes and therefore the amount of plastic being released in the environment by them is at an alarming rate. With the rise in environmental activism, these companies started to face a severe backlash against their products. And therefore many of them started promising to reuse the plastic already discarded by the last point consumer. To divert attention they started to follow the strategy of ‘Overpromise, Shifting Goalposts and Drop Commitments’. More than 35% of promises remain unachieved and 32 % of promises remain unclear. For example, the case of Danone, a French food products MNC, promised in 2014 to use 25% recycled PET by 2020, but it went on delaying this promise for a decade and reached only 19% by 2020. They now promise to use 100% recycled PET by 2025! But do you see what Danone is doing? They arent very keen about actually achieving their targets but they are very keen about highlighting their targets to greenwash their products.

Now let us talk about Apparel Industry. Guilt-free fashion is one of the most trending debate topics in this industry, but how guilt-free is our fashion industry? As per a study conducted by Harvard, approximately 1,800 gallons of water is required to grow enough cotton to produce just one pair of jeans. To make just 250 pairs of jeans, the same amount of water is required that can fill an Olympic size swimming pool. Surprised? Wait till you find out the pollution this industry is causing. Poly Ethylene Terephthalate or popularly known as PET, is known to be a major plastic pollutant. Surprisingly, 60% of PET released as a pollutant is sourced from the apparel industry. Adding to it, Dyeing Process is today's biggest source of water pollution. Talking about guilt-free fashion, one can only wonder how many more revolutions it can take to achieve the real tag of ‘Guilt Free’. Surely water footprints of the textile and fashion industry are higher, but here too, famous brand houses are accused of greenwashing their products. Recently International Consumer Protection and Enforcement Network (ICPEN) highlighted in one of its reports that 42% of claims touted on the internet regarding eco-friendly, organic or sustainable, were either exaggerated or deceptive. In total, 1.3 million USD were paid as a 'fabric fine' for misleading rayon as ‘Bamboo fibre’. Big fashion houses like Zara promise that their clothes will be made from 100% sustainable fabrics by 2025, too near target it seems. In a case study it was found that Zara’s clothing with the ‘Join Life Tag’ which has the stamp of Forest Stewardship Council, was stamped only for the tag and not the clothing. H&M says its fashion is conscious while Levis claims that its fashion is helping the environment. But in reality, today sustainable fashion is a hoax. Nearly 35% of microplastics in the ocean have their origin in the clothing and apparel industry, it remains the largest consumer of water and also tops the list in waste generation every hour. In the era of ‘fast fashion’, most of the clothing ends up in incinerators within a year of production. This industry knows very well that customers will blindly pick the product whose label reads Eco Friendly because who has the time to fact-check their claims? Hence, Guilt Free Fashion has rather become a marketing strategy following the legacy of ‘Green Sweeping’.

Here’s what governments can do to regulate Greenwashing in their country. It should begin with Suitable legislation against misinformation or lack of information provided by the firms and then identify the firms suspected of indulging in this practice of Greenwashing or green sweeping. The need of the hour is to establish appropriate regulatory bodies to curb such practices and also to set standard protocols to be followed by the firms. EU has proposed to set new rules to establish a clear regime for environmental claims and labels. They aim to ensure that consumers receive trustworthy information about the environmental credentials of the products they buy. As a customer, you should check the content, ingredients etc. before buying the products. Visiting websites, cross-checking claims and not keeping quiet against greenwashing can be your small bit against this practice. Remember the ‘3R Mantra’- Reuse, Reduce and Recycle, no strategy has proven to be more effective than 3R. Always remember, this is 21st-century capitalism which feeds on our insecurities, bombarding us with new needs every day. But amidst all this, who is paying the bill? Our planet!!